ARYA DHARM: HINDU CONSCIOUSNESS IN 19TH-CENTURY PUNJAB

The major focus of this book is on modernising movements -- social,religious and cultural -- among Punjabi Hindus from the 1860sthrough World War I. The Arya Samaj, one such movement, dominatesthe volume, as it dominated a half-century of change in the Punjab. Prof. Jones begins with an account of the earliest individualattempts of reformers to adapt their cultural traditions to the newworld of the British Empire. He examines the development of newideologies, the creation of group consciousness based on them, andthe resultant expression of an overt Hindu politics. Hedemonstrates that the process underlying cultural interactionbetween the British and Punjabi Hindus, beginning in aparticularistic manner, found expression by the twentieth centuryin the demands of a politicised Hindu elite. He also delineates thepattern of communal conflict among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs andthe dynamics of the British Raj that contributed to this conflict.